I've been around teeworlds for quite a few years (remember teewars?) but not as a very active player. On and off mostly.
I still return to it not just because I find it a great game but also because it's easy to get someone to try it.
The initial learning curve is almost non-existent. It works great for LAN parties. If everyone is new in the game, it's super fun and enjoyable.
That is until they try it online and find someone skilled. It's too hardcore, they can't keep up and most frequently drop it.
In my opinion, the skill gap between new and experienced players and the lack of tools to help often pushes new players away.
As I see it, bots are one way to help this.
So for years I've been looking at different bot efforts that sadly never got to a point of being useful.
Seeing someone's effort being pushed back due to fears of misuse makes me rather sad and annoyed...
Anyway, just wanted to show my support to @rand() and say that what I read in the thread is promising. If you can get the bot engine to a point where people can actually use it to train offline, I think it may actually benefit the community in the long term. Specially if like @android272 and @pelya mentioned, you can make their level adjustable either automatically or by user choice.
In this way, bots could be used as a tutorial or training ground to help filling the skill gap I mentioned. A pattern common in most FPS games. Get to know the game before going out there to the online jungle.
On a side-note @rand(), in case you never heard of it, have a look at:
http://omni-bot.invisionzone.com/wiki/
and one game where you can try that engine: http://www.etlegacy.com/
This engine is quite advanced and designed for 3D games. Still there may be some ideas and/or code that you could reuse from there.
In the future, much like @pelya I'd love to see this built into vanilla teeworlds. If properly implemented, people could then filter servers based on presence/absence of bots.
That way, if you really hate playing with or against bots, you can filter out servers that have them.
Last but not least, @rand() You mentioned back there that you would be releasing the code sometime in the future. Do you have it somewhere already? If not, do you have any release date planned?
Cheers